She woke London's dockers by shooting peas at their windows

Transcribed from the audio; small errors are possible.

In 1930s London, dockers were woken by a woman with a pea shooter. Her name was Mary Smith. She was a knocker-upper, a human alarm clock, in Limehouse. Most knocker-uppers tapped your window with a long pole. Mary used dry peas, sixpence a week per customer. Her clients included dock workers, and she woke hundreds of people every working morning. In 1931, a policeman named John Topham photographed her. He sold the picture to the Daily Mirror for five pounds. It launched his career. Mary retired in 1934, aged 69. By the 1950s, cheap alarm clocks had largely ended the trade.